Alternative Economies

Research

This research cluster focuses on the way in which different economic
modalities relate to other forms of social life, including religion and
politics. Drawing on recent work concerned with ritual economies in
post-socialist and post-colonial contexts, the commodification of forms
of care and intimacy in the West, informal economies, business cultures,
notions of poverty, prosperity, and greed, as well as new forms of
property and ownership, we explore the relationship between the kinds of
things being exchanged and the social relations produced out of these
exchanges, as well as the circulation of different forms of value.
Please contact Rebecca Empson for more details: r.empson@ucl.ac.uk

Research Projects

This 5 year, ERC-funded interdisciplinary project asks why do some
resource-rich nations become wealthy, while others seem to become the engines
that fuel growth elsewhere? It focuses on the country of Mongolia.

Events

A student-led research group on Alternative Economies
meets once a week in the Department and is run by Aleksi Knuutila (a.knuutila.11@ucl.ac.uk),
UCL Anthropology PhD student. In June 2012 the group held a workshop on The
Creativity of Property focusing on the topic of property and ownership in moments of change. In
exploring the reasons and consequences behind the constitution of property,
they showed how it fabricates certain categories of persons, groups and
objects, and assigns originality or origination.